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As sure as the sun rises in the east, the start of each year brings with it a fresh wave of assurances from the “gurus” who appear in the financial media that this year will be a stock picker’s year. And as sure as the sun sets in the west, the year invariably ends with…

When I look at hedge funds, there are three data points that keep bothering me. They create a pattern that doesn’t make a lot of sense. I hope you can help me understand what I’m missing. 1. Hedge fund performance has been terrible. In 2014, the Barclay Hedge Fund Index returned 2.88 percent. In that…

In 2014, the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index lost 0.6 percent, underperforming the S&P 500 Index by 14.3 percentage points. And while the index outperformed foreign equities, which generally lost between about 2 and 5 percent, it underperformed virtually riskless one-year Treasury notes, which returned 0.2 percent. It also underperformed a typical, globally diversified and…